July 25, Friday – Rain

No urge to get moving because it’s raining and foggy. I’m SO glad that I decided to bring the big rig up here rather than leaving it parked two hours south of here and tent camp in the national park. The creation of the Friendship Sloops is located just up the road from my campground so I took the VW to the Ralph Stanley Shop in Southwest Harbor. I was surprised how small the boatyard was; just one building set near the water with an office manager, one mammoth wet dog and four boatwrights. They were in the process of restoring a boat. The shop was like every other shop; rough cut lumber stacked in every available free space; planners, jointer, table saws, band saws, drill press. Open bench space was at a premium. Jigsaw shaped marine grade plywood scraps were stacked against one of the scaffolding legs; scaffolding with planking of both rough cut planks and planned planks surrounded the sloop mid hull. Someone was down on the cockpit sole (floor) and was doing the knee killing work of drilling pilot holes for fasteners into the planking. There are literally thousands of holes drilled, fastened, plugged and sanded on a wooden boat. Even in her naked bare wood state and the necklace of walking planks surrounding mid way up, her hull was a thing of beauty. The offset plug patterns in the hull planking revealed the internal rib patterns, And every horizontal surface had a sediment layer of sawdust to compliment the broomed up piles of wood shavings here and there on the wooden shop floor.
I brought from home a T-shirt from the Northwest School of Woodenboat Building in Port Hadlock, Washington. I’ve been wanting to trade this T-shirt with someone for a local T-shirt and I was hoping that the Ralph Stanley Shop was the place for the swap. No luck. Everyone working. No talking with the traveler. The T-shirt left with me still looking for that trade.
I left the car and jumped on the #4 Loop bus to Sand Beach on the south end of the island. I decided I wanted to hike up the Bee Hive but I couldn’t find the trailhead after I was dropped off. So I hiked the Ocean Trail that skirted high above the surf to the Otter Cliffs in the drizzling rain. I had packed lunch, which I enjoyed on a granite slab high above the sea. This was a peaceful time, a reflective time. The tide was out exposing its underskirt of rocks and reefs. Within a few hours the seawater would be sending towering plumes up the rock cliff but for now it surged and gurgled a hundred feet out. The massive tidal changes in the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy provide for a continuously changing seascape.
Granite has been mined here for years. The quality granite is sent out of state; the rest is put to use everywhere. There are no guardrails in the park just blocks of granite outlining the right away of the roads. Granite is used to support dock systems with no worry of corrosion or worms to bring the wharfs down. Granite blocks make up the campfire rings at each site in the park.
Since buses go by every half hour, there is no need to hurry in the park. It invites you to stop and explore. While sitting on the bus at one of its stops, I spontaneously got off because I liked what I saw out the window and wanted to explore. When I finally stepped off the bus for the final time and headed home in the Jetta, it was so wonderful to enter into a warm, dry “house.” This RVing is going to make me into a soft man.